Before I moved to North Carolina I didn’t know a whole lot of the specifics around home food preservation. I had never pickled, canned, or done anything preserve-y. My parents use to have a pickling party around Labour Day every year (the ‘u’ is in there because I lived in Canada then) but I never really got into it. In the past two years I’ve become a lot more involved with preservation stuff as the close to 100 extension agents across the state to whom I provide technical food safety support spend a pretty good chunk of their time teaching and answering questions about pickling, pressure canning and the likes.

I jumped into pickling last year and pressure canning this year so beyond the science aspect I have an idea of the practices – what’s tough and what might go wrong. Preservation is a bit like baking where recipes, ratios and processing times are important to create a final product that’s not going to paralyze or kill someone. Follow the rules and everything should be okay.

AP reports that something went wrong in the Chicago area and now a few folks are suffering from salmonellosis:

Salmonella isn’t typically associated with fermented or acidified cucumbers (the heat processing of the product should kill it and the  pH is too low for growth of other pathogens). AP reports that the illnesses have been linked to pickles that were sold to customers in plastic bags. This outbreak looks like the result of a post-pickling issue; possibly dirty hands or equipment used to transfer the pickles to bags.